What if the N64 had a CD drive...?

In your opinion, how different would gaming history have been if the Nintendo 64 had come with a CD drive? I always considered this the decision that allowed Sony to dominate the PS1 (and then PS2) era due to securing so many exclusives not possible on the N64, but was Sony's reign at the top inevitable due to their headstart and focus on mature games?

Obviously going ahead with the SNES/PlayStation add-on might've nipped the Sony threat in the bud, but by 1994 that boat had sailed - could Nintendo still have won?

Incidentally, why didn't the N64 come with BOTH a cartridge slot and a disc drive? (similar to the way the Commodore 64 could run games from either cartridge, floppy disk or cassette tape)

That way, they could've avoided load times on games that needed it and yet still supported large 3rd party games such as Final Fantasy VII which required CDs (unless they were just terrified of piracy).

And the Saturn is not exactly a good reference console as it was completely destroyed by the Playstation.

There is a fair chance the disc drive + cartridge slot was expensive which is why the console was gimped in other areas to avoid making it stupidly expensive. Bit like adding a time of flight 3D camera to a next gen console...

Yes but isn't GTA helped somewhat by running off PS2 / Xbox. Don't those consoles have shite loads of RAM compared to the PS1 / N64.

I admit I really do not understand this but I get the impression the N64 would have required far more memory to run something like Hyrule field off a disc than it had. And that extra memory would have made the console much more expensive.

Even though Hyrule field looks trivally small nowadays compared to things like Just Cause 2 it was pretty big back in the day.

PazJohnMitch wrote:
I also think Zelda would not have been possible on CD.

That was the quote at the time. Probably because the rest of the console's architecture was balls. I think the argument was that content and texture streaming would not have have been possible from CD. It's done fairly routinely these days though, and I'm sure someone did it on the PS 1

Aside from the technical issues, I also heard that Nintendo had alienated various third parties during the NES / SNES eras which is why Namco, Square et al were so eager to jump ship (I'm not sure how true this is though, as surely they could've gone to Sega during the MegaDrive era?)

I read that Tomb Raider 2, Resident Evil 2 & Metal Gear Solid were all supposed to be launched on the N64 (alongside the PS1 and PC) but the lack of CD drive nixed it.

Even if the N64 came with a higher price tag because of it, I think the allure of Nintendo's first party games (on top of the multiplatform games) would've made the purchase worthwhile for many

I admit I really do not understand this but I get the impression the N64 would have required far more memory to run something like Hyrule field off a disc than it had. And that extra memory would have made the console much more expensive.

Even though Hyrule field looks trivally small nowadays compared to things like Just Cause 2 it was pretty big back in the day.

Considering that there's more geometry in just a street or two of GTA 3 than the entirety of Hyrule field, it would definitely be possible on lower spec hardware to do a field that was mostly field with a walled off section in the middle for the Lon Lon Ranch, which I must note needed a separate load.

Nintendo were telling fibs.

*edit* I suppose I should elaborate further, N64 cartridges did not boost the amount of available RAM, it's just stored data that needs to be decompressed and moved into the system memory so it would be operating with the same limitations as a CD-ROM, the only difference being access speeds.

liohuffman wrote:
Aside from the technical issues, I also heard that Nintendo had alienated various third parties during the NES / SNES eras which is why Namco, Square et al were so eager to jump ship (I'm not sure how true this is though, as surely they could've gone to Sega during the MegaDrive era?)

I read that Tomb Raider 2, Resident Evil 2 & Metal Gear Solid were all supposed to be launched on the N64 (alongside the PS1 and PC) but the lack of CD drive nixed it.

Even if the N64 came with a higher price tag because of it, I think the allure of Nintendo's first party games (on top of the multiplatform games) would've made the purchase worthwhile for many

Resident Evil 2 did come out on the N64, albeit later than the Playstation version.

The Hyrule Field thing has piqued my interest. I'm aware that textures were rarely streamed from disc on the PS1 but I assumed that was because the laser would have been busy streaming the music. Was it actually not possible for some reason?

Regardless if Hyrule Field was not possible on PS1 I'd assume that was due to it having half the RAM rather than anything to do with the storage media.

21 consoles, 5 handhelds, 2 PCs, 1 Mac and about 700 games from the past 30 years. Every major manufacturer and developer represented. Still a fanboy for disagreeing with you.

The PS1 could stream textures. I've just proven it by opening the CD drive on the world map of FFVII, eventually the textures stop and you just see the sky bitmap. Probably works because FFVII used midi music, so the tiny music files were plonked into memory and the laser could be free to load textures on the fly.

So Hyrule Field had nothing to do with cartridges vs CD.

Edited by Psiloc at 10:06:18 16-06-2013

21 consoles, 5 handhelds, 2 PCs, 1 Mac and about 700 games from the past 30 years. Every major manufacturer and developer represented. Still a fanboy for disagreeing with you.

liohuffman wrote:
Obviously going ahead with the SNES/PlayStation add-on might've nipped the Sony threat in the bud, but by 1994 that boat had sailed - could Nintendo still have won?

Going ahead with the SNES/CD add-on would have meant that Sony would own all the copyrights to music, characters and games on the CD format. This wouldn't have nipped the "Sony threat in the bud" this would have meant "Sony owns Nintendo."